Links: 2009-05-11

  • The Agony Continues – Latvian GDP Falls By 18% – Edward Hugh

    “Latvia’s economy shrank by nearly a fifth (year on year) in the first quarter, according to the latest flash estimate from the national statistics office. Obviously this is a dreadful state of affairs, and illustrates just how difficult the country’s chosen adjustment path is proving to be.”

  • Exodus – Political Animal

    “the evacuation of the Carteret Islands, a tiny atoll in the South Pacific. The sea levels have been rising, toppling trees and swallowing up the coastline. Salt water bubbles up from what were once the gardens where the islanders used to grow food. Every so often, king tides sweep across the islands; one recently cut one of them in two. Now, they’re leaving.”

  • Printing money: Quantitative easing in a new capital of counterfeiting

    In Peru, ordinary citizens are printing money like governments in the U.S. and elsewhere. Quantitative easing isn’t just for governments.

  • Germany’s economy: The export model sputters – The Economist

    “Countries with similar models are thinking of trading them in. It is “no longer realistic to hope that Japan’s growth can come back just by exporting the same products,” the Japanese prime minister, Taro Aso, told Handelsblatt newspaper. Philipp Hildebrand, president of Switzerland’s central bank, expressed similar doubts. Germany’s economic press is peppered with articles asserting that the country “needs a new business model”. Most German leaders disagree.”

  • Joblessness soars in Spain – The Economist

    “The European Commission predicts that unemployment will hit 20.5% next year. It also says Spain will struggle longer than other countries to recover, getting into positive growth only in 2011, a full year after the EU as a whole. “The sick man of Europe” was how the pro-government El País newspaper greeted the news.”

  • Who’s in charge here? – The Economist

    “This capture is partly financial: the top 25 subprime-mortgage originators, many with ties to big banks, have spent close to $380m on lobbying and campaign contributions over the past ten years, according to the Centre for Public Integrity, a non-profit organisation. It is also cognitive: senior economic officials have spent so much time in and around Wall Street over the years that they can no longer distinguish between the interests of big banks and those of the public.”

  • Green Shoots or Dandelion Weeds? – John Mauldin

    “So, are things back on track? Is the recession just about over? Is that a green shoot? I don’t think so.”

  • Enjoy the rally while it lasts – but expect to take a sucker punch – Amrose Evans-Pritchard
  • Full Cheney Panic – Andrew Sullivan

    “And as history slowly accepts that this man disgraced his office more profoundly than any before him, as it sinks in that this man did not merely make mistakes, as all flawed politicians do, but committed war crimes, with pre-meditation and elaborate subterfuge, he slowly realizes what’s happening to him. He can feel it. And so he resists the way he always resists – by lashing out, attacking, smearing, snearing, and grabbing every inch of the limelight he can.”

  • Wells Fargo expects earnings to fill deficit – FT.com

    It seems these guys are trying to earn their way out of capital shortfall.

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